The whole shelf
All free summaries — page 937
47,382 public-domain books, summarised. Page 937 of 988.
The incredible aliens
William Bender
In this spare, cynical work of science fiction, a weary investigator aboard a technologically stifling starship encounters an "alien" race, only to discover that the boundaries between progress and primitivism are entirely matters of perspective.
The Irish Penny Journal, Vol. 1 No. 20, November 14, 1840
Various
This mid-nineteenth-century miscellany offers a panoramic view of Irish heritage, blending historical accounts, folklore, and scientific curiosity into a uniquely crafted portrait of a nation’s identity.
The Last Call: A Romance (Vol. 2 of 3)
Richard Dowling
A desperate search for buried treasure beneath a crumbling London tower leads two men into a trap of shadow, exhaustion, and impending ruin.
The Little Review, August 1916 (Vol. 3, No. 5)
Various
The spirit of early twentieth-century modernism crackles in this vibrant collection of essays, poems, and editorials. It serves as a manifesto for the uncompromising artist, daring the reader to trade conventionality for the dangerous pursuit of beauty.
The Merriweather Girls and the Mystery of the Queen's Fan
Lizette M. (Lizette McCully) Edholm
Three young women on a Hudson River estate form a club that leads them into local mysteries, small-town rivalries, and the frantic search for a stolen heirloom.
The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 17, No. 474, Supplementary Number
Various
This collection of correspondence and observations offers a candid, unvarnished portrait of a complex Romantic icon, revealing the man behind the legendary verses through his own restless, witty, and often melancholic prose.
The new science of space speech
Vincent H. (Vincent Hayes) Gaddis
Humanity stands at the threshold of a cosmic conversation, listening for whispers from the stars while learning to speak with the intelligent creatures already sharing our own blue planet.
The Next Time We Die
Robert Moore Williams
Trapped in a desolate Martian wasteland, two humans face certain death while debating the nature of survival and the eternal, recurring spark of human ambition.
The Nursery, April 1873, Vol. XIII.: A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers
Various
This collection of children’s literature serves as a gentle time capsule, offering a window into the domestic life, moral instruction, and simple pastimes of 19th-century American childhood.
The Nursery, September 1881, Vol. XXX: A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers
Various
This collection captures the Victorian spirit of childhood, offering a gentle, instructive, and whimsical window into the domestic and natural worlds as viewed by the youngest readers of the late nineteenth century.
The reckoning
Percival Wilde
A barber shop becomes the stage for a long-awaited confrontation when a man trapped in a chair finally faces the devastating consequences of his past actions.
The Skeleton On Round Island: From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899
Mary Hartwell Catherwood
The ice-bound straits of Lake Michigan hold secrets for those brave enough to traverse them in the waning days of winter. A simple act of gallantry in a treacherous landscape leads a lonely ferryman into a life-altering encounter with both the living and the spectral.
The Spectre In The Cart: 1908
Thomas Nelson Page
A man of cold, legalistic logic is forced to confront the spectral shadows of a brutal, racially charged past. This haunting story explores how the memories of violence refuse to stay buried in the Southern soil.
The Toy Shop: A Romantic Story of Lincoln the Man
Margarita Spalding Gerry
Burdened by the human cost of the Civil War, an anguished leader finds unexpected counsel and solace inside a humble neighborhood toy shop.
The Water-Finders
Judith Vandeleur
The residents of a drought-stricken village must bridge the divide between ancient superstition and modern necessity to survive a deadly fever. This narrative captures a community forced to choose between the comfort of old habits and the hard, necessary work of digging for life-giving water.
Thoughts on the Religious Instruction of the Negroes of this Country
William S. (William Swan) Plumer
Providing a window into the nineteenth-century Southern ecclesiastical perspective, this treatise advocates for the systematic religious indoctrination of enslaved people as both a spiritual duty and a tool for social stability.
Thy Rocks and Rills
Robert E. Gilbert
In a future defined by a cold, performative obsession with violence, a quiet farmer and his extraordinary bull take a stand against the brutal machinery of the state. This is a story of resistance set against the backdrop of a flooded, ruined landscape where human life is measured by the theater of the duel.
Troublesome Comforts: A Story for Children
G. R. (Geraldine Robertson) Glasgow
A precocious young girl’s impulsive thirst for independence leads her and her fragile brother into a harrowing night stranded on a remote island. This Victorian-era story captures the tension between childhood bravado and the weight of responsibility.
![Cover of Twenty Unsettled Miles in the Northeast Boundary: [From the Report of the Council of the American Antiquarian Society, presented at the Annual Meeting held in Worcester, October 21, 1896]](https://cdn.myebooksbuy.com/c/twenty-unsettled-miles-in-the-northeast-boundary-from-the-report-of-the.webp)
Twenty Unsettled Miles in the Northeast Boundary: [From the Report of the Council of the American Antiquarian Society, presented at the Annual Meeting held in Worcester, October 21, 1896]
Thomas C. (Thomas Corwin) Mendenhall
A century-long diplomatic oversight leaves a twenty-mile stretch of water between Maine and New Brunswick without a legal boundary, forcing an attempt to resolve the resulting international friction and maritime confusion.
Two worlds for one
George O. (George Oliver) Smith
A brilliant but unhinged scientist decides the only way to settle global political conflict is to literally slice the planet in two.
Viewpoint
Randall Garrett
Richard the Lionheart finds himself transported from a dungeon cell into a futuristic office building, where his courage is tested not by human enemies, but by the terrifying alienness of the unknown. He soon discovers that the greatest barrier to his freedom is the very thing that anchors him to his own era: his…
Welcome, Martians!
Evan Hunter
This short science fiction story explores the jarring, existential helplessness of two explorers who land on Mars only to be immediately usurped by a local society that refuses to acknowledge their true identities. It is a cautionary tale about the suffocating power of bureaucratic narrative over individual truth.
A Brace Of Boys: 1867, From "Little Brother"
Fitz Hugh Ludlow
The story of an observant bachelor uncle and his two wildly different nephews, this narrative captures the messy, hilarious, and ultimately tender transition from childhood to adulthood in 19th-century New York.
A knife in time
Ray Humphreys
A lone, outcast mule skinner carries a knife that others fear, but in the heat of a desperate accident, that blade proves to be the only thing capable of saving his boss’s life.
A Romance of Youth
François Coppée
The passage from youth to adulthood is a fragile, often painful transformation, marked by the collision of romantic ideals with the harsh, cold realities of poverty and grief.
A Sermon Preached at Kensington Church, on June the 29th, 1794: After the Victory Gained at Sea, June the 1st
Joseph Phillimore
A nation finds its footing through faith, interpreting a hard-won naval triumph not as a feat of mortal strength, but as a direct intervention of divine mercy during a perilous time.
A Thorny Path
Georg Ebers
Amid the political volatility and religious tensions of third-century Alexandria, a young woman stakes her life on an act of quiet mercy to save her brother from the wrath of an emperor.
A Toothache on Zenob
Boyd Ellanby
A dying civilization and a hopeful Earth reach out across the void, only to be silenced by the weight of ancient tradition. This poignant tragedy explores the friction between rigid dogma and the terrifying necessity of progress.
Adventures in error
Vilhjalmur Stefansson
The world is full of settled truths that are, in fact, nothing more than comfortable delusions. By examining everything from Arctic geography to the history of the bathtub, this book reveals how easily falsehoods become institutionalized as fact.
Assassin
Jesse F. (Jesse Franklin) Bone
A lone observer watches a world succumb to the gentle, hypnotic influence of benevolent visitors from the stars. He understands what no one else dares to consider: the price of a perfect peace is the end of human freedom.
Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, fifth series, no. 141, vol. III, September 11, 1886
Various
A vibrant, eclectic collection of Victorian-era essays, stories, and social commentary that captures the anxieties and curiosities of the 1880s through the lens of a wide-ranging periodical.
Day of Wrath
Bjarne Kirchhoff
A desperate civilization decides the fate of a distant world, weighing the survival of their own people against the morality of a swift and absolute judgment.
Diary of Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys
This private account of a seventeenth-century life captures the vibrant, messy, and remarkably human textures of an era, preserved through the unvarnished honesty of a man who wrote for no one but himself.
Do the Dead Return? A True Story of Startling Seances in San Francisco
Anonymous
Can a room full of hard-headed skeptics, trained to unmask fraud, find the truth when their own senses betray them?
Dorothy's Double. Volume 3 (of 3)
G. A. (George Alfred) Henty
The final volume of this Victorian mystery finds a young woman cleared of a criminal conspiracy, while her persistent suitor tracks a mysterious doppelgänger across the American frontier to uncover a long-buried family secret.
Field Trip
Gene Hunter
A futuristic observer attempts to study the primitive customs of the twentieth century, only to find himself trapped in the very past he sought to analyze. This story explores the fragility of rules when confronted with the raw, forgotten nature of humanity.
Five Happy Weeks
Margaret Elizabeth Munson Sangster
A fragile mother must travel south to recover her health, leaving her three young children to navigate a five-week separation at their aunt’s Virginia estate.
Foster's Letter of Marque: A Tale of Old Sydney: 1901
Louis Becke
A spirited whaling captain proves his worth in love and war, outmaneuvering a boastful rival to win the heart of a proud official’s daughter in the early days of colonial Sydney.
Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Yellowstone National Park
Josephine Chase
A spirited band of young travelers faces wild bears, treacherous geysers, and mountain highwaymen during an eventful journey through the American West.
Hafbur and Signe: a ballad
George Borrow
Bound by an ancient feud and a fatal prophecy, two royal lovers risk everything to meet, choosing a shared death over a life spent apart.
Harold : the Last of the Saxon Kings
Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
A saga of the final days of Anglo-Saxon England, this account tracks the inevitable, tragic collision between a noble native king and the encroaching tide of Norman ambition.
Harper's Round Table, February 9, 1897
Various
This collection of writing captures the inquisitive, adventurous, and occasionally mischievous spirit of late 19th-century youth. It offers a window into a bygone era of childhood, where the world felt simultaneously larger and more intimate.
Impact
Cox, Irving E., Jr.
The crew of a trading ship arrives on a pristine planet, only to discover that the "primitive" inhabitants possess a terrifyingly superior intelligence. What follows is a quiet, psychological battle between the crushing weight of galactic bureaucracy and the seductive allure of an alien Eden.
In the Cards
Alan Cogan
When a device allows anyone to view their future with perfect accuracy, free will evaporates, turning life into a script everyone is forced to perform.
Lady Maclairn, the victim of villany
Mrs. (Rachel) Hunter
A young woman navigates a web of domestic treachery, moral endurance, and the quiet triumph of virtue within the stifling confines of a corrupt household.
Letters to his wife Mary Borrow
George Borrow
A restless wanderer bridges the distance between solitary, rugged exploration and the comforts of domestic life through a sequence of candid, urgent reports sent home to his wife.
Life and Death of John of Barneveld, Advocate of Holland
John Lothrop Motley
This dense, scholarly chronicle maps the precarious twilight of a statesman’s career against the gathering storm of the Thirty Years’ War. It offers a masterclass in the cold, intricate mechanics of early seventeenth-century European diplomacy.
Life Gleanings
T. J. (Thomas Joseph) Macon
A collection of personal reflections and local anecdotes, these pages capture the fading social rhythms, wartime memories, and rapid modernization of Richmond from the mid-nineteenth century into the twentieth.